Galatians 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul closes the letter with practical instructions: gently restore someone caught in wrongdoing, carry each other's burdens, test your own work, and share good things with those who teach you. He warns that whatever a person plants is what he will harvest, and urges the Galatians to keep doing good and not give up. He then takes the pen himself to write in large letters, saying that those pushing circumcision want to look good and avoid persecution, while he will boast only in the cross. He ends with peace and mercy for those who follow this rule, a note about the marks on his body, and a final blessing.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • Paul addresses his readers as brothers
   • A person may be caught or overtaken in a transgression
   • Those who are spiritual are to restore such a person
   • The restoration is to be done in a spirit of gentleness
   • The one restoring is to watch himself
   • The reason for watching oneself is the risk of also being tempted
2. 6:2
   • The readers are to carry one another's burdens
   • Carrying one another's burdens fulfills the law of Christ
3. 6:3
   • A person may think he is something when he is nothing
   • Such a person deceives himself
4. 6:4
   • Each person is to test his own work
   • After testing his own work, he will have grounds for boasting in himself alone
   • His boasting will not be in relation to another person
5. 6:5
   • Each person will carry his own load
6. 6:6
   • The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him
7. 6:7
   • The readers are not to be deceived
   • God is not mocked
   • Whatever a person sows, that is what he will also reap
8. 6:8
   • The one who sows to his own flesh will reap corruption from the flesh
   • The one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit
9. 6:9
   • We are not to grow weary in doing good
   • We will reap at the proper time
   • The reaping is conditional on not giving up
10. 6:10
    • We are to do good while we have opportunity
    • The good is to be done toward all people
    • The good is to be done especially toward those who belong to the household of the faith
11. 6:11
    • Paul tells the readers to see with what large letters he has written to them
    • Paul wrote to them with his own hand
12. 6:12
    • Some people want to make a good showing in the flesh
    • Those people are compelling the readers to be circumcised
    • Their only motive is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ
13. 6:13
    • Those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law
    • They want the readers to be circumcised
    • Their purpose is to boast in the readers' flesh
14. 6:14
    • Paul says may it never be that he boasts, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
    • Through the cross the world has been crucified to Paul
    • Through the cross Paul has been crucified to the world
15. 6:15
    • In Christ Jesus circumcision counts for nothing
    • In Christ Jesus uncircumcision counts for nothing
    • What counts is a new creation
16. 6:16
    • Some walk according to this rule
    • Peace is invoked upon those who walk by this rule
    • Mercy is invoked upon those who walk by this rule
    • Peace and mercy are invoked upon the Israel of God
17. 6:17
    • From now on no one is to cause Paul trouble
    • Paul bears in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus
18. 6:18
    • Paul invokes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to be with the readers' spirit
    • Paul calls the readers brothers
    • Paul says Amen

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

The Greek behind "overtaken in a fault" is open two ways: caught in the act by other people, or caught out by the wrongdoing itself, taken by surprise before he saw it coming. The wording leaves both readings available. "Restore" translates a word used of setting a broken bone or mending a torn net. "Meekness" in 1611 English does not mean weakness or timidity; it is the gentleness of someone who has the standing to come down hard and does not, and it is the same word listed among the fruit of the Spirit in chapter 5.

6:2

"Burdens" here translates a word for a crushing weight, the kind of load that flattens a person who tries to take it alone. It is a different word from the one in verse 5, which is why the two verses are not saying opposite things. "The law of Christ" is a deliberate turn of phrase: Paul has spent the whole letter arguing that the law cannot put a person right with God, and now uses the word "law" for what Christ laid down.

6:4

"Prove" in 1611 English means to test or assay, the way a metal is tested for purity, not to demonstrate to somebody else. "Rejoicing" translates a noun meaning a boast, or the grounds a person has for boasting. The picture is of a man who checks his own work and so has something solid to point to, instead of measuring himself against the man next to him.

6:5

The word for "burden" here is not the word used in verse 2. This one means a pack or load that one person is expected to carry, used of a soldier's kit or a ship's cargo. Verse 2 is about weights too heavy for one; this is about the load that is properly your own.

6:6

"Communicate" in 1611 English means to share something with someone, to give them a portion of what you have. It has nothing to do with talking. The Greek word is the one behind "fellowship," and "in all good things" is broad enough to cover food, money and practical support for the person doing the teaching.

6:7

"God is not mocked" translates a verb that literally means to turn up the nose at someone, to sneer. The force is not that God's feelings are hurt but that he cannot be outwitted: nobody sows one crop and sneaks a different harvest past him. The whole verse runs on a farming image that every hearer would have known firsthand.

6:8

"Flesh" here does not mean the body as opposed to the soul. Paul uses the word for human nature left to run on its own appetites, which is why the rendering says "selfish nature." "Corruption" translates a word for rot and decay, what happens to produce that spoils, so it keeps the harvest picture running: one field yields rot, the other yields life.

6:9

"Faint not" translates a word for going slack and collapsing from exhaustion, the way a runner's legs give out. "Due season" is harvest time, the fixed point in the farming year when a crop is ready. The image is that the interval between sowing and reaping cannot be shortened, only waited out.

6:10

"Household" in the ancient world meant far more than a modern family living in a house. It covered the extended family, dependents, employees and slaves under one roof, all bound by real obligations to each other. Calling believers a household claims that kind of tie, not just warm feeling.

6:11

The King James wording misleads a modern reader. Paul is not saying the letter is long; he is saying the letters of the alphabet he is forming are big. Letters in this period were normally dictated to a trained scribe, with the sender taking the pen at the end to add a greeting in his own handwriting as a mark of authenticity. Paul takes the pen here and writes in outsized characters. He does not say why: poor eyesight, unpracticed handwriting and sheer emphasis have all been suggested.

6:12

"Shew" is the old spelling of "show," and "in the flesh" means outwardly, on the body, which is a pointed way to talk about circumcision. Circumcision is the surgical removal of the foreskin, performed on Jewish boys on the eighth day after birth, and it was the physical mark of belonging to the covenant people. For the adult gentile men Paul is writing to, submitting to it was a permanent and painful public act of joining Israel.

6:13

"Glory" in King James English means to boast or take credit, not to shine. The word runs through this verse and the next. "Glory in your flesh" is blunt and physical: they would be boasting over the cut made in someone else's body, counting converts like a tally.

6:14

"God forbid" is a 1611 English idiom for strong refusal. The Greek says only "may it never be," with no mention of God in it. The cross itself was a Roman method of public execution used on slaves, rebels and non citizens, designed to humiliate as much as to kill, so "boast in the cross" was a jarring pairing of words, close to boasting in a gallows.

6:15

"Availeth any thing" means counts for anything, carries any weight. "New creature" translates a word that can mean either the thing created or the act of creating, so the Greek can be read as a person remade or as a whole new creation coming into being, and it is not clear which Paul intends.

6:16

"Walk" is the standard Jewish idiom for how a person conducts a life, not for physical walking. "Rule" translates a word for a straight measuring rod used by carpenters and surveyors, a standard you line things up against. The last phrase is genuinely disputed: the small connecting word can mean "and," making "the Israel of God" a further group receiving the blessing, or it can mean "that is," renaming the very people just blessed. The Greek allows both, and readers have divided over it for centuries.

6:17

"Marks" translates the Greek word stigmata, which meant a brand or tattoo burned or pricked into the skin. Slaves were marked this way to show whose property they were, and devotees of some gods carried marks of their god. Paul means the scars left on him by beatings, stoning and imprisonment, and the word carries the sense of ownership: the marks say whose he is.

6:18

"Be with your spirit" is a way of saying "be with you," the whole person, and not a comment on one part of a human being. "Amen" is a Hebrew word carried over untranslated, meaning roughly "truly" or "let it stand"; it was the word a congregation said aloud in agreement when a letter like this was read out to them.